Prodigal Son (6 page)

He’d been back in New York for two weeks when they got a rental
offer on the Southampton house. It was pathetically little, but it was money, enough to make Peter decide to take it. He was renting the place furnished, with everything in it, unlike the apartment in the city, which he had to empty now. He asked Alana to come to New York to help him, and she said she didn’t want to leave the boys alone with her father.

“Just hire someone to do it,” she said blithely, as he felt tears sting his eyes. He was exhausted and discouraged, and Alana wasn’t making it any easier for him. He had spent an entire day opening e-mails that told him there were no jobs for someone of his qualifications and stature. He was willing to do damn near anything he had to, and now he had to empty their apartment on his own. Alana was acting as though she had never lived there. The buyers were offering to purchase some of their furniture, mostly the antiques, which was good news. Alana and Peter couldn’t afford to be sentimental right now, about anything except each other, and Alana didn’t seem inclined to do that.

“What do you want me to do with the furniture that they don’t buy?” Peter asked Alana in a flat voice.

“I don’t know,” she said vaguely. “Put it in storage? Give it away? Do whatever you want.” She obviously didn’t care, about the furniture, or even him.

“Are we planning to live in your father’s guest house forever?” he asked miserably. “Some of this is good stuff, and it would be nice to use it when we get another place of our own.” He was trying to hold on to that belief, with no help from her.

“I’m not in love with it, especially if they’re buying the antiques.” Alana had made a full-time job of filling their apartment with expensive things for several years, and now she cared about none of it. It
was as though she wanted nothing to remind her of her years in New York, and his recent failure there. Peter was feeling crushed by feelings of inadequacy, it was reminding him more and more of his youth, when he couldn’t do anything right, and his parents blamed him for everything. Alana wasn’t blaming him, but she didn’t have to. Her actions and refusal to come to New York even for a visit, to help him, said it all. And she acted like she was in denial about the situation they were in, and wanted no part of it. Her father had given her the opportunity to dodge it entirely, and she had seized it gladly. Now it was all Peter’s problem, not hers. He got that message loud and clear.

He spent the next two weeks packing up everything he wanted to keep from the apartment. He got wardrobe boxes from the moving company for Alana’s clothes, which she wanted in L.A. She was turning her childhood room in her father’s house into a closet to store what she wouldn’t wear, like fur and winter coats, and there were plenty of walk-in closets in the guest house for the rest of her clothes. Peter boxed it all up for L.A., along with the boys’ clothes and toys. He didn’t know what to do with his own things, and felt odd sending them to L.A. If he did, he would be tacitly agreeing to move there, and he hadn’t done that yet. He wanted to stay in New York, even if they went back and forth for a while, until he found a job. In the end, he sent most of his things to storage, along with some books and furniture, and all he kept out were two suitcases of clothes, which were all he needed at the moment. He was living in jeans and sweaters while he packed up the apartment, and he had kept out several business suits for interviews and meetings. He sent his summer clothes and his tuxedo to California with Alana’s things—he was more likely to use the dinner jacket there, escorting Alana to social events. For
the moment, he had no social life in New York and felt like he was in mourning for his career and their lost life. He had hardly spoken to anyone in the past three months—he was too deeply ashamed over the demise of his career. He hadn’t done anything wrong, but it seemed that way. He had advised the firm about some of their riskier investments. Peter had always been willing to walk the edge and take high risks, which was also why they had had big wins. And some of their high-risk investments had been very good for a while, although like everyone else, their real estate investments had proven to be disastrous for them. It was part of what had brought Lehman Brothers down too, and several banks. They weren’t alone in their mistakes, and finally it had caught up with them.

The New York apartment closed within thirty days. The buyers tried to knock another two hundred thousand off the price, for things they claimed needed to be repaired, and Peter split the difference with them. He was grateful for the money, although much of it went to pay taxes, the mortgage, and some debts. There wasn’t much left afterward, but it was at least a small cushion, along with the rental of the house in the Hamptons.

It was a depressing day for Peter when he left the apartment for the last time. He stopped in the doorway of the boys’ wing of the apartment, and saw a book and a game forgotten in their playroom and tucked them under his arm. He drifted past the suite he’d shared with Alana, the projection room, and the gym with all the equipment still in it, purchased by the new owners since it was nearly brand new and state of the art. They had also bought the heavy silk curtains Alana had spent a fortune on, and much of the furniture in the reception rooms, and beautiful antique Persian rugs, and an Aubusson in their bedroom that Alana had purchased at a Christie’s auction in
Paris. They were all symbols of a lost life, and Peter couldn’t help but wonder if they would ever live like that again, if he would be able to even come close to it, and if the world as they knew it would ever be the same. These had been golden years. They had taken a lot for granted, and Peter knew he never would again. But he had also never lost sight of what was most important to him, Alana and the boys. They were the only family he cared about. Alana and the boys were all of Peter’s world, and more than ever now.

Peter moved to a small residential hotel in the East Seventies after he vacated the apartment. He had promised the boys he’d come back to California as soon as possible, and he’d been in New York for a month, selling the apartment and packing up their things, sending out résumés and contacting people about jobs. He could do that from L.A., but he wanted to be in New York in case someone wanted to meet with him. So far no one had; they were too busy with their own problems to think about hiring anyone. But just as Peter was planning to book a flight to L.A., he got a call from an investment bank in Boston. They were impressed by his résumé, and Peter had met the head of the bank several times over the years. It was a solid, reputable firm, and they had taken none of the risks Whitman Broadbank had, so they were still on solid ground. They wanted him to come up and see them, and Peter readily agreed. He was willing to go anywhere for a job. Chicago was on his list of possibilities too, as well as San Francisco and L.A. But he would have preferred an eastern firm. He had gone to business school in Boston, so it was a familiar city for him.

It was snowing when he got there, in the second week of February. He had a long meeting with the board of directors, and they invited him to lunch in the firm’s dining room afterward. It looked like a
men’s club, with somber portraits of their founders on the walls, and wood paneling, and his meeting with them went well, although he was severely disappointed to be told at the end of lunch that they were unable to hire anyone at the moment, in light of the current crisis, but he would be at the top of their list when they began hiring again. It was why they had wanted to meet him, but they had no idea when their hiring policies would loosen up, just as no one knew how long the economic crisis would last. So for all intents and purposes, and to meet Peter’s immediate needs, the meeting had been in vain. It was a crushing blow to him.

Peter had driven to Boston, to avoid canceled flights in bad weather, and he was about to head south toward the freeway, when he saw the familiar signs he used to take to go home from school when he was younger. It brought a wave of nostalgia as he thought about his parents. He was tired after the wild-goose chase that had brought him to Boston, to satisfy the bank’s curiosity, but not to offer him a job. He was bone tired, and then as though of its own volition, his car turned toward the highway that would take him home. The only thing he had there now was a lake house he had inherited fifteen years before, and hadn’t been to since, although he had done yearly maintenance on it to keep it sound, and a brother he never wanted to see again. There was no reason on earth for him to go back to his hometown, but he was heading in that direction, whether he wanted to or not. It was almost like a
Twilight Zone
experience as he started to see familiar signs drift by.

He called the boys from the car, as he drove north toward his hometown of Ware, but neither of them answered, and when he called the house in L.A., he was told that they weren’t home from school yet and Alana was out, no surprise. Peter was lost in his own
thoughts and memories as he drove north. He realized, when he finally saw the turnoff, that he wasn’t going to Ware, as he continued on the narrowed highway toward the house at Lake Wickaboag. At the moment, it was the only house that he still could call his own. It suddenly occurred to him that he might want to stay there for a few days, if it was habitable, before he went back to New York. He had nothing to rush back for, no appointments and no one waiting for him. At least he could take a look at it, and maybe sell that too. It had been foolish and nostalgic of him to hang on to it for this long, when he never used it, but it was the only place where he had pleasant memories of his youth.

The scene that came to mind immediately was a summer day when he had gone fishing with his father and Michael, on one of the rare days his father had taken off to just fool around with them. His mother had packed them a picnic basket, and they had sat in the boat all day, catching one fish after another. Peter figured he must have been about eight at the time. It had been a real victory when he had caught more fish than Michael, who was usually the better fisherman, but when they got home Michael had claimed the larger number for himself. Peter had tried to correct him, and his father winked at him, giving him the message that the truth was their little secret and to let Michael have his day of glory, yet again. It had been a crushing disappointment to Peter. It was always Michael who was protected and never Peter. Their father had always had a soft spot for Michael and talked about what a “good boy” he was, with the implication that Peter was the “bad boy,” and often enough he was. And Michael knew just how to play their father, saying he wanted to be a doctor just like him, which fed their father’s ego.

Peter had been assigned the role of younger brother, although
Michael was only twelve minutes older, but he treated it more like twelve years. Michael was so well behaved that he got all the dignity and praise, and privileges that went with the older brother’s role, and took it seriously when he called Peter his kid brother. And after all, Peter was the screw-up, the “baby” who had tantrums and couldn’t read. Their parents bought into it, and treated Michael like the responsible mature one, and Peter’s inability to read for a long time gave credence to the myth that he was younger. Their treating him that way just made him act out more, and angrier at Michael. But until they got home and Michael lied about how many fish he had caught, and their father let him, it had been a golden day for Peter. He had loved fishing with their father and basked in the warmth of his attention. It was rare for him to take a day off from work.

Peter could still remember the crickets and the sounds of summer, whenever they were at the lake house. It had been one of his favorite places to be, swimming, fishing, playing in the woods. And being there in the summer meant that he didn’t have to go to school.

Peter saw the signs leading toward the lake, an hour after he left Boston, and he took a turnoff he didn’t recognize onto a familiar road. The trees lining it looked bigger than he remembered, and when he reached the narrow driveway, with a rusted mailbox at its entrance, he turned onto the dirt and gravel road. He could feel his heart beat in his chest as though he expected to see someone there, and as he squinted past the light from his headlights, he saw it, the house where he had spent his summers as a boy. It was dark and deserted, and if he closed his eyes, he could hear his mother calling his name as he hid in the trees playing games with Michael. For him, this
was a trip back in time to a place filled with dangerous memories and people who had disappointed him, but his earliest memories here were those of any ordinary boy. Peter could feel his heart beating faster in his chest as he got out of the car and walked slowly toward the house.

Michael McDowell hurried up the steps of the small tidy house on the other side of town from his home and office. He had been there before. There was a neat picket fence surrounding the property, rose bushes in front of it, and a deep rose garden on the way to the house. The fence was freshly painted, and the house was not imposing, but in good repair. He had come to see an elderly man with bronchitis. Seth and his wife, Hannah, had been patients of his father’s, and their only daughter had come up from Boston. She owned her own business and had done well, and she was as attentive as she could be to her parents, while leading a busy life, running a business by herself, with three nearly grown children of her own, and living three hours away. Hannah had recently died of pneumonia after a long battle with cancer, and now Barbara was concerned that her father was so ill. She had driven up from Boston, and called Michael on the way. They were old friends, although they didn’t see each other often. But she counted on him to check on her parents whenever they were ill. And he had been wonderful to her mother
before she died—they often told their daughter that he was like the son they’d never had.

It was a relief to Barbara, living farther away, to know that someone like Michael was nearby. She trusted him implicitly, had always liked him, and there was no question in anyone’s mind, he was the resident saint. He had taken over where his father had left off, taking care of all the sick people in town. He had given up a potentially great career in Boston in anesthesiology, to come back and take on his father’s general practice in a less exciting small town. But he seemed to love it, and always said he had no regrets about the career he had given up. Everyone could tell by the way he spoke to his patients that this was where his heart was. Both Barbara and the doctor were concerned that her father had lost his will to live since his wife died six months before.